


The Chained Warden

by Wildcard



Category: League of Legends
Genre: Abuse, Everything is terrible, M/M, Torture, Unhealthy Relationships, scrimshaw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-09
Updated: 2018-04-09
Packaged: 2019-04-20 16:29:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14265054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wildcard/pseuds/Wildcard
Summary: Karthus sets his sights on Thresh. This is not a good thing.Written during the era of the League, when champions were summoned onto the Rift to fight.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Commissioned work.

Ever since the prisoners had strung him up with his own chains, Thresh had not slept. What need did his body have for regenerative rest when he was nothing but bones animated by malice? There was a world full of souls to be reaped that called to him, the susurration as siren a draw as his own hooks.

The only rest he knew was when a Summoner failed him and he died. There were a half-second there between dying on the field and appearing on the fountain when everything was quiet. It was the closest he got to true death, a perfect moment of nothingness that he only knew existed because the timer had ticked on.

It was an amusing enough experience and one that Thresh did not fear. As Lucian’s Culling struck him, Thresh did not think of the moment of nothingness but instead of how he had protected Jinx (and how utterly unnecessary body-blocking for her would’ve been if she’d just taken his lantern). His thoughts were consumed with the hope she would avenge him, not his fading health bar.

When nothingness came for him, it held him too long, and when Thresh woke, he wasn’t standing on the fountain but bound on his back, something hard and round under him. He jerked upwards, only to be stopped by the chains that were wrapped around him. They looped over his entire body, binding his arms close to his chests and his skeletal legs down against the rock. The violent luminescence of his skull illuminated the area around him well enough for Thresh to quickly realize he was on the Twisted Treeline and chained to one of the altars.

How? Why? They hadn’t even been near the twenty minute mark. The opposite team couldn’t have surrendered already and even if they had, there should have been a warning before he was pulled into a new game.

Besides, he should have spawned on the fountain, not tied to an altar!

“I hear this was how you died, warden. Some people never learn..” The odd echoing voice of the Deathsinger sounded from somewhere near the top of his head. 

“You,” Thresh snarled, the malevolence in his voice unmistakable. The small hooks that spun out from his skull on their own chains strained outwards to reach Karthus, but to no avail. Karthus must be out of reach for all that his voice sounded so close. “Why have you brought me here?”

“Shouldn’t you ask how I brought you here? Such a lethally delicious piece of magic and you fail to appreciate it.” Karthus tsked, the sound akin to the fluttering of old, dried pages, and circled to the side so that he was within Thresh’s line of sight. If his arms hadn’t been bound, if his scythe had been in his hand, Thresh could’ve landed a perfect hook on him.

“As if I care for your self-important speeches, lich. Boast about your magic all you want but all that interests me is torment.”

“And torment you shall have, warden.” Karthus touched one of the little hooks that sprouted from Thresh’s skull delicately, curved claws scraping over them with the screech of bone-on-bone. Souls animated Thresh, forming his armor and acting in lieu of his life force. It was their glow that lit Thresh’s skeletons and when Karthus dragged his fingers through the light, he felt the power of the soul join his.

Yes. Just as expected. Thresh would make an excellent sacrifice once all the power of the souls he’d collected were released. He hooked one of his fingers under one of the curled bone-hooks and gave it a hard tug.

“Karthus!”

He’d expected Thresh to snarl and threaten him, not to shudder like a marionette wielded by an inexpert master. Even his voice had sounded breathless, for all that the Chain Warden did not breathe. Oh? Had that hurt, then? Karthus had no flesh, no muscles, so he couldn’t smirk but his cold laugh rang out. A skeleton’s face was perpetually grinning anyway.

“Did death not take from you the ability to feel pain? Oh, warden. What delightful agony you shall suffer.” He laughed again, laying his hand against Thresh’s skull. Their bones clicked together as Thresh’s head hooks whipped upwards, snagging on the sleeve of Karthus’ robes. What did matter? The cloth was tattered anyway.

“Come up with your own lines, lich,” Thresh growled. His voice echoed inside his chest and under his jacket, reverberating in the same fashion as Karthus’ voice. How was Karthus supposed to be intimidated by it when they sounded so alike?

He laughed again, scraping his finger bones down over the curve of Thresh’s skull until he plunged them into the glowing socket. The narrow slit accommodated his fingers easily, Karthus pushing his finger bones in until he could feel the empty space where Thresh’s brain had once been.

“No synaptic nerves and yet you still suffer,” he rumbled, curving his fingers so that he could scrape the tips of the bones against the inside of Thresh’s skull. Light spilled around his hand, glowing poison-green, and the sound that escaped from Thresh wasn’t of pain but discomfort. 

“That is a mere annoyance. I will show you true suffering.” Thresh had no eyelids to squeeze shut but he ground his teeth together as Karthus carelessly swirled his fingers inside Thresh’s skull, hooking them behind the bridge of Thresh’s nose so that his fingers dipped into one eye socket and then came out through the other eye socket.

“Don’t make promises, warden. The only certainty is death.” The gruesome spectacle made Karthus laugh, the chilling sound accompanied by him yanking upwards, forcing Thresh to surge against the chains that bound him. He could pull Thresh about like a marionette; the little hooked head claws didn’t even hurt as they ripped frantically at his sleeves.

When he slid the finger bones of his other hand into Thresh’s mouth, Thresh bit down hard. His teeth made no mark on the bones but a jolt ran through Karthus. He’d actually felt that. How peculiar. Was it because of the souls? Did the suffusion of them mean that they were a little closer to still living?

What a disgusting thought.

And yet, there was something pleasant about the way that Thresh arched. Like he was still human, like Karthus had reduced him to something weak and mortal instead of the proud Chain warden.

Delicious.

He yanked his fingers out of Thresh’s skull in a vicious motion that had Thresh’s skull thumping down against the stone altar. Green clung to his fingers, smoke-like wisps that caught between his joints and colored his bones faintly green.

When Karthus raised his fingers to his mouth and thrust them inside, trying to fill his own skull with the strange soul-smoke, Thresh shuddered.

“...Interesting.” Karthus leaned down, opening his mouth to press his teeth against the ridges of Thresh’s eye socket. He didn’t technically breathe, having no lungs to pump air with, but the same power that let him speak let him suck inwards, let him draw the souls from Thresh’s skull into his own.

The scream that pierced the air was the sweetest sound that Karthus had ever heard.

Karthus shivered, letting the souls slip down his spine, winding around him like the lover’s caress he’d never had in life. 

On the altar, Thresh thrashed, hissing as the chains slithered even tighter around him.

“Give them back,” Thresh snarled, finger bones clawing at the stone. “Give them back, lich, you did not earn them! They are mine!”

“They were you,” Karthus corrected, finger bones drifting along Thresh’s jaw, as gentle and “Your armor. Your protection. And now they’re mine, just as you will be.” 

Before Thresh could reach, Karthus sealed his mouth over Thresh’s, bones smashing together as Karthus hungrily inhaled and took more souls. Thresh arched, his scream echoing inside Karthus’ skull, twisting so violently that he smashed Karthus’ hand between his own skull and the altar.

The grinding noise of bones cracking was what finally made Karthus draw away, dizzy and delighted by the rush of power. The glow in Thresh’s eyes was weaker now, dimmed and darkening from the loss of the souls.

“You will long to live again, lich, just so you would be able to console yourself with the thought that death would end your torment,” Thresh rasped. 

“Warden,” Karthus almost purred the title, the heady rush of power from the souls making his skeleton grin even wider, “Shall I show you just how little protection death offers you?”

He gave Thresh no chance to respond, moving rapidly as he stripped Thresh of the rest of the souls, pressing their mouths together so he could drink and drink, taking the very essence of Thresh into himself until at last, Thresh lay there with a skull that held only the faintest glow of green.

If it weren’t for the hooks coming from his skull and the odd shape of his skeleton, he might’ve looked almost like a normal skeleton, like nothing more than one of the desiccated corpses that Karthus liked to decorate with. 

His fingers trailed trailing down along Thresh’s spine until he reached the buttons of Thresh’s jacket, then he paused simply to study Thresh’s face. It was a shame that the lack of flesh and muscles made it difficult to emote. He would’ve loved to see Thresh’s expression then. Fear? Resignation? Shame?

Anger. Definitely anger. 

But the shame would come soon enough.

The chains were an impediment to stripping Thresh but not an insurmountable one. In a few minutes, he had Thresh bared completely, green-tinged bones held in place still by the criss-crossing loops of chain. 

“What are you planning?” Thresh snarled, voice weaker now.

Karthus hooked his fingers under the joints of Thresh’s knees and shoved them apart, the chains screeching a protest as he dragged the bone legs apart so he had unobstructed access to Thresh’s pelvis.

His answer to Thresh’s question was a smile that looked as if it should have had fangs and a violent thrust of his staff up past the sacrum and along Thresh’s spine. 

The scream that earned him was even more lovely than the last.

The blue light from the staff filled Thresh, spilling past his ribs and vertebrae, scourging the green from it and replacing it with Karthus’ own blue. It ate into him like a virus, like the onset of rot and ruin, and all the while, Thresh screamed like a soul in torment.

The newly-consumed souls in Karthus quivered to the sound of Thresh’s screams, rippling and trembling as if they were still his, as if they still hurt when he did. Karthus pressed his palms to the altar on either side of Thresh’s face and watched raptly as the green fought with the blue, as the light in Thresh’s eyes flickered and flamed but finally, finally died down.

“You won’t resist me now, will you, warden?” Karthus asked as he picked up the ceremonial quills, specially enchanted to safely contained the acid-like ink he had filled it with. Thresh’s hooks curled tightly, like clenched fists, then unfurled and waved in the air.

Karthus took that as agreement and smiled to himself as he started to etch the runes into Thresh’s skull. There was no screaming this time, just a low, rasped sound that was very much like a moan. This was right. Karthus’ magic suffused Thresh. Karthus’ magic was Thresh now instead of the souls that Thresh had so carefully harvested.

Karthus was Thresh and Thresh was Karthus and of course it felt right for Karthus to mark Thresh. To remake Thresh, to replace his spine with his staff and to etch his possession of Thresh into Thresh’s very bones.

He’d taken Thresh’s souls. Why should he not have Thresh’s bones too?

The ink ate into the bones, etching shallow channels that glimmered dark blue. Karthus wrote his name into Thresh’s teeth, opening the other’s mouth to scribe his runes on the inside of Thresh’s skull too. Inside and out, soul and bones, Thresh was his. 

He stroked the hooks on Thresh’s head, coaxing them to relax and lengthen, reshaping Thresh until at last, what stood from the altar was his creature and his alone.

“What an improvement this is, my Warden,” Karthus murmured with all the pride of a man who had just finished polishing his dearest possession. “My Warden. My champion.”

Thresh looked down at him, naked and glowing blue, the chains wrapped around him wound into a single rope that Karthus held carelessly in one hand. 

“Now go collect souls for me,” Karthus instructed and gave the rope of chains a casual shake.

The Chained Warden nodded.


	2. a minute rebellion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thresh knows he needs to break free. He knows he can't do that without souls.
> 
> Too bad he never gets to keep the souls he collects.

Souls.  _ Souls. _

 

He hungered for them, fingerbones flexing at his sides as he watched from the back of the room. Karthus liked Thresh to attend his Pentakill concerts but Thresh couldn't hear the music anymore. He couldn't focus on anything except how tightly clustered together the souls were, the audience packed into the room as tightly as tamped down flour in a jar. There were so many of them and the quantity was what made him hunger more than the quality of them. The dimmed souls hardly alive, the ones tattered and torn from the cruelty of the world, the shining ones that had never known hurt, the defiantly smoldering ones that would not relinquish their flame...

 

He wanted all of them. He wanted any of them.

 

He wanted his lantern to stop being so fucking empty.

 

Karthus had been demanding the souls Thresh collected for -- how long was it now? Weeks? Months? Years? Thresh had no way of telling time, not when his life was reduced to being either Karthus' pet or being on the Rift. There was no limit to how many matches he could be summoned for in one day. There was no way to know if it was one match per day or one per week. The Shadow Isles had no natural day time or night time.    
  
All Thresh knew was hunger, so deep that it gnawed at all of him. It ate at his bones, ashing the marrow inside so they felt as empty as his lantern. On the Rift, it pulled him to take dangerous risks, placing himself right in the path of Caitlyn’s Peacemakers or Varus’ Piercing Arrows just so that he could get one more soul.

 

It never felt like enough. Not when he knew that he’d have to hand them back the moment the game was over. He gorged himself on the artificial minion souls, hoarding them with the contemptuous obsessiveness of a jeweler no longer trusted with the real thing and now collecting shards of glass instead. He knew they weren’t real. He knew they weren’t good enough. Minion souls were the junk food of the Rift. They were chewing gum, no calories and no energy, as filling as a mouthful of snow would have been back in his human days.

 

But they were all he could have except for the occasional champion soul and  _ oh _ , how delicious those were.

 

Yordles with all their fizzing energy and power, so much lifeforce crammed into such a small body. Void creatures with their dark, bitterly sharp strength and foreign power, so strange and cold to Thresh’s senses but somehow refreshing too. Humans were the most numerous species on the Rift by far, their souls as vivid and frail like colored tissue paper.

 

Fellow inhabitants of the Shadow Isles were especially delicious to him now - he’d never savored their souls overmuch before, finding them to feel too much like his own. Now, though, taking their souls felt like the sweetest of revenge. It wasn’t the possession of the souls that pleased him so much as the rending moment when he tore it from the champion, when he felt them resisting and their soul surrendering anyway. Once he had their souls, he didn’t have enough time to toy with them. He couldn’t torture the champions the way he wanted, not when he had to get back into lane and defend his ADC, but he could relish that moment when despite all their struggling, their soul had come to him.

 

 

He savored the souls while he had them, relishing the sensation of his lantern filling. It didn’t matter if his team won or lost the game. All that mattered was that he gathered as many souls as possible. 

  
Karthus needed those souls - no, Karthus wanted those souls. Thresh was the one who needed the souls. They were his armor, his protection from the world. Without them, he was vulnerable to far more than just Karthus. To Karthus, the souls were simply sources of power, no different from any other reagent he used.

 

Karthus didn’t need those souls, not like Thresh did. Karthus didn’t deserve them, not when it was Thresh who did all the work of collecting them, Thresh who took all the hits from the ADCs and supports just so he could fill his lantern. Karthus didn’t feel the same hunger Thresh did when he didn’t have enough souls. Karthus just switched to a different project, a different spell.

 

Thresh didn’t have that luxury. Thresh had only one need, one  _ weakness _ , and Karthus had collared Thresh with that one figurative chink in his armor. It was a perfect cycle.   
  
The more souls he gave up, the weaker he got. The weaker he got, the more he needed souls and the harder he tried to get them. The more he collected, the more Karthus took from him and the weaker Thresh became.   
  
There had to be a way to break the cycle. There had to be some way to break free. Thresh collected souls on the Rift and plotted.

 

And then the game ended and he gave up his souls to Karthus and wondered why he had ever wanted to be anywhere except seated at Karthus’ feet where he belonged.


	3. discoveries and desperation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Help comes from an unexpected source.

The Rift was no longer a safe haven. Thresh could collect souls, could build up his armor and resistance to magic again, but it didn’t matter. He didn’t feel strong anymore. He didn’t feel like himself.   
  
He’d been able to endure the knowledge that Karthus would strip the souls from him once the game was over but at least before, while the game had lasted, he’d been allowed to delude himself into believing he was still dangerous in his own right. He’d been allowed to pretend he was the fearsome Chain Warden instead of simply Karthus’ pet.

No more.   
  
Everyone from the Shadow Isles and the Void knew of his disgrace. Even if he wasn’t facing Kog’Maw in lane, Maokai or Wukong came ganking, or Hecarim thundered in. And then during the team fights, Thresh swore that even the ranged champions came within melee range to get a chance to taunt him.

The Summoners might not notice it but the other champions did. It was clear that for whatever reason, his fellow inhabitants of the Shadow Isles had lost all respect for Thresh.

At least they had more sense than to approach Thresh about it.   
  
At least the jungle camps weren’t in on the secret yet.   
  
They still cowered from him as they should, as  _ everyone _ should. Thresh took a particular vicious delight in flaying the golems, knocking the large monsters back and venting his rage on them. Jinx was safely farming under their tower. He could take his time and kill the golems slowly.   
  
It was soothing and easy and just what he needed. He ignored the way the Summoners were raging at each other, tuning everything out to focus only on the sheer clean rightness of hurting things.

...Right until his Summoner stopped letting him use anything but auto-attacks. The golems pummeled him with their stone fists, slamming into him so hard that his bones broke under his robes, Karthus’ runes cracking and their power seeping out into the air. 

Hecarim galloped by, clearly on the way to gank, then paused, “Can’t even handle the golems on your own?”   
  
“My summoner--” A hard gasp escaped him as one of the golems’ fists collided with his face, “--appears to have rage quit.”   
  
“Pity.” Hecarim watched Thresh’s health bar fade, waiting until the ‘EXECUTED’ sounded. Only then did he casually finish off the golems and trot back and forth over Thresh’s ruined collection of bones. “I was enjoying watching you be even more helpless than usual.”   
  
Thresh could only hope his Summoner wouldn’t come back. Maybe he’d be safe at least on base.

 

\------------------------------------

  
  


It’s the sound that draws Sona away from her tower. The game’s paused, all the Summoners having disappeared for some reason, and everyone’s grouped up into their usual combinations. Noxians are all talking quietly together, the Demacians are laughing together, the Void creatures all being being lectured by Vel’Koz on what they did wrong during the match so far but there’s someone in a bush who’s in pain.   
  
She can  _ sense _ it.

  
Her Aria of Perseverance always heals whoever is most in need as well as herself. It lets her know who is in need of her power, just as Soraka gets pointed towards whoever has dangerously low health.    
  
But it doesn’t make sense. The game’s paused. Nobody should be hurt! All injuries are immediately healed whenever the game stops so suddenly. How can anyone still be hurt?   
  
She’s sure her ADC would tell her it’s none of her business, but Sona disagrees. Someone’s hurt. That makes it her business. She drifts towards the bush and the sound of scraping, the odd grind of bone-against-bone, and the grass parts before her.   
  
Thresh is sitting there. His knees are huddled against his chest and he’s picking at one of them with the edge of his scythe.   
  
The sight is so horrific that it takes Sona a few seconds to absorb what she’s looking at. She just stares blankly at Thresh’s exposed bones, the glowing blue light from them reflected in her eyes.   
  
Thresh is  _ covered _ in runes.   
  
She’s no mage but she knows when something is wrong and there is no way to describe this except ‘wrong’. Why would Thresh have runes carved into him? Why is he sitting here instead of laughing with Hecarim? He looks so much smaller like this, huddled up like an injured child afraid to be found.   
  
“Go away,” he rasps. His voice still holds its dangerous rumble but something in his eyes painfully contradicts his words. He looks to Sona like the injured birds she sometimes found on the streets. She is never able to resist picking them up and healing them, even if it meant taking them home or getting her hands dirty.   
  
She can’t leave Thresh either.   
  
Instead of gliding away, she strums a few chords on her etwahl. The green light of her Aria of Perseverance surrounds them both, then dies away.   
  
The runes remain.   
  
Sona frowns, small pink mouth forming a pout as her eyebrows furrow. Why didn’t that worked? The glow of the runes hasn’t even lessened! What are those things?! She tilts her head to a side, wishing not for the first time that either she could speak or everyone else knew sign language. She sets her fingers over the strings of the etwahl again and kneels before Thresh, keeping a little space between the two of them so he won’t feel threatened.   
  
She gives a little nod, then starts in on the Aria of Perseverance from the beginning. On the Rift, she usually just plays a few bars from the most upbeat section. It’s all she has time for in the heat of battle. But now the summoners can’t control her and she has all the time in the world.   
  
Whatever this is, it’s powerful. It will take more than just a selection from her Aria to cure it.

 

The magic flows from her etwahl as she plays, a green glow enveloping Thresh and herself once more. It flows into the deeply etched runes, a jade light that tries to replace the blue. The two colors contrast instead of melding - there is no turquoise, no teal, just the push-pull of green and blue battling each other. The green isn’t quite the same as Thresh’s used to be. It’s too vibrantly alive, the green of living spring instead of the cold light green of tormented souls.   
  
The green of Sona’s magic isn’t right but it’s better than the vicious blue which, now that she looks at it properly, appears to be stemming from the runes. 

 

She doesn’t understand this. Thresh in his Championship mode should not be hurt like this. He should not be scraping at his bones with his scythe, huddled in a bush as if trying to avoid even his own people. It should be Hecarim helping him, surely, or Yorick. If there is a mage strong enough to affect the Chain Warden so, then shouldn’t everyone be grouping up against them? Especially the inhabiants of the Shadow Isles! Or is Thresh under some curse that won’t let him speak of what’s happened? Is that’s why he has to hide?

 

Her song plays on, Sona strumming until her fingers are weary and faltering. She’s played far longer concerts on stage but those are music alone and the innate power of the etwahl. Healing Thresh like this is sapping her of her own strength; she doesn’t want to stop to sip on one of her mana pots, not when interrupting the song might let the power of the runes triumph, but she’s so tired. Whoever did this is powerful indeed. A new champion from the Shadow Isles? Or just a new threat that the League hasn’t convinced to be a champion?   
  
She can’t keep playing. She _can’t_. There’s blood on her etwahl’s strings now, her fingers rubbed raw, but she plays on anyway because the carvings in the bone are starting to close. She shuts her eyes and plays; she knows this tune by heart, she doesn’t need to see her blood slide down the strings. She’ll play until her fingers were worn down to bone like Thresh’s if that’s what it takes!   
  


People underestimate her because she doesn’t talk. Because she’s a healer. Because she’s a support. They think she’s shy and soft and sweet and they forget how hard she rocks out, that she’s a Pentakill member and an Arcade geek. They think that she doesn’t know what it’s like to be hurt and play through the pain. She can’t talk. She can’t contradict them. But she shows them they’re wrong about her, every time she plays with Pentakill, every time she scrubs someone’s name off the High Score board and replaces it with her own.   
  
Everyone thinks that Thresh is a god with his hook and his box, with his infinite scaling stats but right now, cowering and cursed, he is nothing more than a person in need of healing. She fixes the image of his eyes in her mind as she plays on and does not let herself grow distracted by neither the pain nor the thought that she had not even noticed when it happened.   
  
It’s the touch of cool glass against her lips that makes her open her eyes even as the familiar sweet scent of the health potion surrounds her. Thresh is holding a health pot to her mouth, bony fingers wrapped around it securely to keep it tilted only slightly. It’s difficult to read emotions on a skeleton’s face (if it can even be called a face instead of a skull) but she thinks there’s something pleading about the light in his eyes. He’s looking at her as if she’s the only ray of hope he’s ever seen.   
  
Maybe she is. Maybe nobody cares enough about Thresh to help him, just as nobody cared enough about Sona to adopt her (only because of the etwahl, only because of her music, but she loved her mother anyway and for nights she woke up dreaming of blood on her hands and there’s blood on her fingers now and she’s shaking and --   
  
She swallows and the healing magic of the potion tingles in her fingertips. The potion usually seals the skin together first and then knits together the flesh under it but Sona won’t stop playing long enough for the skin over her fingers to close. She won’t. She swallows again instead, the soothing trickle of the potion sliding down her throat and calming her. Thresh holds the potion to her mouth until she’s done, then offers her a mana pot instead.  He doesn’t open it or touch it to her mouth, just holds it up and waits for her decision.   
  
He doesn’t even speak, as if he’s afraid that’ll interrupt her playing or distract her. Since when has he been so cowed? So desperate? He hasn’t tried to push her away. He hasn’t told her to leave him alone. He’s helping her and that, more than anything else, tells her how badly he needs her help. His fingerbones, now that she looks at them properly, are scraped blunt at the tips. He must been trying to pick away at the runes on his body the way a child picks at scabs. How long has he been struggling like this? So alone. So  _ scared _ .

 

Pity wells in her heart and Sona nods, her ponytails bouncing about her as she does so. Yes. She wants the mana. She wants to keep healing Thresh. Most of her power has been going to him, her Aria’s healing focused on Thresh so strongly that it wasn’t enough to heal her own fingers as she played. The healing and mana pots would have to take care of her so she can take care of him.

 

There’s blood on her dress now, red splotches where the crimson fluid dripped down from the etwahl. She blinks back the memory of her adopted mother’s blood on the etwahl and doesn’t let herself think of how she bleeds the exact same way. 

 

Thresh doesn’t bleed but he’s suffering all the same. She has to fix it. She  _ has _ to.

  
Her fingers are trembling and raw with exhaustion by the time she finishes the Aria but if she’s made any headway, it’s so minute that she can’t see it. Should she give up and find some other way to help him? She rests her shaking fingers against her knees, the fabric of her dress soft and soothing. She wants to soak her hands in ice water, wants to wrap them in silk and cashmere and tuck them under a cat’s warm belly. They hurt and despite all her efforts, she doesn’t seem to have helped him!   
  


Dark spots appear on her dress and after a second, she realizes that she’s crying. Her shoulders are shaking, Sona hunching inwards as tears of frustrated disappointment roll down her face and plop on her gown. She tried so hard. She did! She played her best, she poured her own energy into her Aria and still he was trapped by those runes.   
  
Cool, rough fingerbones cup her cheek and a second later, the ends of her own hair tickle at her face as Thresh tries to wipe the tears from her face with Sona’s own fluffy ponytails. The attempt is so ridiculous that it makes her laugh silently, her shoulders quivering in a way that is indistinguishable from sobs. 

 

“The runes have weakened,” he rumbles, his voice so sudden and unexpected after that long period of silence that Sona flinches but doesn’t back away, looking up at him with wide, wet eyes. She almost forgot that he could talk, so focused on fixing him that she had thought nothing of how silent he was during the Aria.   
  
The bones of his hand clasp over hers and Thresh rolls her hands between his as if he’s trying to massage them. There’s no flesh on his hands to soften them but it isn’t entirely unpleasant. There are wooden rollers with ridges on them that Sona gets massaged by at spas. This feels similar.   
  
“Keep playing,” he says, and for all that he tries to make it sound like a command, it comes out as a plea. His hands work over hers, rubbing so clumsily that it’s clear that he’s never even tried to do this before. But then, why would he? She’s never heard of him having any friends with flesh. His friends are the fellow denizens of the Shadow Isles and none of them have any healing powers.   
  
...Except Soraka. In her Reaper form, she’s welcome there.   
  
Of course, in her Reaper form, Soraka’s a bitter, vengeful creature that has no desire to help anyone. And she isn’t even on the field right now. But after the match, Sona can find Soraka. The two of them together should be able to make the runes weaken further and even if they can’t break them entirely, Soraka can keep checking in on Thresh at the Shadow Isles. She can make sure that the runes don’t try to regain the ground they’ve lost and together, the two of them can set a regular schedule of sessions with Thresh. 

 

He lets go of her hands and repeats, “Keep playing.”   
  
She isn’t sure if he knows the word ‘please’. She thinks not, because otherwise he would have surely used it already when his need is so dire. Her hands are warm and supple now, relaxed once more. They’ll hurt later, be so sore and stiff that she’d need to soak them in bowls of hot chamomile tea, but for now, she can return to playing. If she wants to. If she wants to keep pushing herself further when she’s already so tired. If she wants to keep playing when all her power is exhausted and her Aria will be nothing more than music with less healing power than a health pot.   
  
It’s so little that she can offer now but a little is better than nothing.   
  
She sets her hands onto the strings and takes a deep breath. She is the maven of music, of metal. She will give everything she can to this wounded skeleton. Even if she can’t see that her music has made any difference, he says it has and who would know better if the runes have changed than the person in whose skeleton they have been etched?   
  
When the first few notes of her Aria ring out, his shoulder slump with something that she could swear is relief. The dried tear tracks on her face crack as she smiles, pouring herself into the music once more.  No frenzied Pentakill fan or smitten music critic has ever looked at her the way that Thresh does, the glowing blue sockets brightening when she plays.   
  
They’re still filled with azure light but in the very center, Sona think she can see pinpricks of green.

  
_ Something _ is working. She’s so exhausted that she has to concentrate on a song that should be as easy as breathing, but she doesn’t care. It’s working.   
  
She locks her gaze on those tiny dots of green and plays on.   
  
In the end, it’s not exhaustion that stops her song but the resumption of the game. She’s back at her base suddenly, healed and ready to rock. Thresh must be back at his. She’ll see him when they get to lane but her Summoner will set her to attacking and healing her ADC, not healing Thresh. Ezreal’s a nice boy, for all his cockiness, but Sona knows she’s going to be resenting having to spend her energy on his minor injuries when there is a person in real need right in front of her!   
  
...What if her Summoner makes her attack? What if she zaps Thresh with her Hymn of Valor? She’s never minded fighting anyone before but then, they’ve never come to the Rift already crippled and then looked to  _ her _ for help.

 

With Homeguard on, she can’t even drag her feet and delay going to lane. She’s there all too fast, hanging back behind Ezreal as he kites and shoots and  _ refuses to shut up _ . Draven and Ezreal both make Sona wish she could stun her own ADCs just so that they’d have a taste of what it’s like to be silent. She likes Ezreal, she really does, but he talks so much and so loudly that she wishes someone would lock him in a museum so she can actually hear her own music.   
  
Now that she’s worried about Thresh and wishing more than ever that she had the vocal chords to question him about this. Who did that to him? Why hadn’t he told anyone? Would he let her tell people who could help him? Soraka and Nami are both good healers. So are Alistair and Taric, though she’s not sure how cooperative Alistair will be. He’s very judgmental. Taric’s a kind person though. Surely he’ll help. Maybe he can give Thresh some precious gems to keep with him to protect him even when he’s at home!   
  
A hook lands on her chest, piercing right under her collarbone, and jerks her a step forwards. 

 

Her startled blue eyes, still rimmed a little red from her tears, lock onto his. The tiniest hint of green that had lurked in the center of his glowing sockets is gone and for a moment, Sona’s heart sinks. 

 

It’s as if nothing happened. With his full armored robes back in place, she can’t even see his skeleton or the runes etched into them. Thresh is acting as if nothing happened either. It’s as if that whole encounter was just a dream. 

 

Maybe it was just a dream. Surely there couldn’t really be someone with the power to do that to Thresh walking around without anyone knowing about it! Surely Thresh wouldn’t really have something so gruesome lurking under his clothes. She’s been very tired lately. It was a horrific dream but all the same, it was just a dream.

 

Thresh is fine.   
  
Thresh is fine and she holds onto that thought as Lucian’s Culling rips through her, sending her falling to the ground. Thresh glides over, no doubt to take her soul and pull his hook out of her. He tears the hook out from her chest, leaning down to swipe his lantern to collect the glowing blue spectre of Sona’s soul.    
  
Once he’s got it, he doesn’t move on. He takes the extra half-second to step around her corpse instead of walking over it.

 

It’s a rare gesture of respect that makes Sona rethink her earlier assessment. Thresh isn’t respectful. Thresh is a jerk! Sometimes he even stands over people’s dead bodies and laughs at the rest of the team. For him to go out of his way to avoid trampling her…

 

There’s simply no helping it. Sona’s going to have to track Thresh down after this match, that’s for sure. If he tells her that she’s just imagining it and nothing is wrong with him, that’s great! Sona would much rather have it just be a bad dream. But if something is wrong, she’ll never forgive herself if she knew and did nothing.

 

How hard can it be to hold a five-minute conversation with him? She’ll just take a few seconds in the changing room to write “WILL YOU LET ME HELP YOU?” on a sheet of paper, find him and pass it to him. And if he says ‘help with what?’, she’ll know she just imagined it and she can play him a little apologetic riff and glide on. If he says yes (and of course he will say yes, saying no is not an option when he’d been so desperate), she will take him somewhere private and ask for the whole story.   
  
It’s a good plan. It’s a great plan. It’s solid and well-thought out and Sona almost pulls it off perfectly. Almost.   
  
Lurking around outside the men’s changing room is embarrassing! Every time someone comes out and gives her a curious look, Sona feels her cheeks heating up even pinker. She doesn’t know what they must be thinking of her but it’s enough that when Prince Jarvan IV stops to ask her if she’s waiting for someone, she ends up flailing in the air with embarrassment before she does a quick sketch of Thresh on the back of her message and shows it to him.   
  
“You’re waiting for Thresh?” Prince Jarvan IV gives her a look of evident concern but ever the gentleman, he doesn’t question why. “I’m afraid he’s not there, Sona. He never changes after matches.”   
  
Sona’s shoulders drop downwards, her mouth pulling down at the edges. She’s been waiting all this time for nothing?! 

 

Fine. She’ll just have to get Soraka to be her escort into the Shadow Isles.

 

Sona is  _ not _ giving up this easily!


	4. fingerbones in water

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thresh asks for help.

 

The sigils etched into his bones were weaker now, Thresh could  _ feel _ it. On the surface, the runes were unchanged, as flawless and deep as the day that Karthus had carved them into place. All his scraping with his scythe had been useless. He’d thought if he could ruin the ruins, if he could warp them somehow, then the spell would break. Like shattering a vase to make the contents spill, his soul would rise free and then he would turn and wreak a terrible vengeance on Karthus.   
  
Or run. More and more often these days, he found himself thinking he should just run the moment he was freed. He’d have no souls on him, no armor. He’d be weakened and vulnerable, at risk of being caged again. It would be far smarter to run but he hated to think like that. That was how prisoners thought, cowering broken beaten creatures that were too defeated to even dream of revenge and hardly dared dream of freedom.   
  
He wasn’t Karthus’ prisoner. He wasn’t. He was caged in his own skeleton, barred in by the runes etched into him, but he wasn’t a prisoner.

 

Not anymore. Not now that Sona was in his sights and her delicate hands held the keys to his cell. He had never paid attention to her hands before except to think of breaking them, snapping those slim fingers so that she’d never be able to play the instrument she so loved. He’d never seen them except as weaknesses that he could exploit but now, what he saw whenever he closed his eyes was her fingers playing over the strings and blood dripping onto her pale blue dress.   
  
He’d made people bleed before, so very many of them, and in far greater quantities but nobody had ever bled willingly for his sake before. They had bled for others, had taken the place of their loved ones, had offered to endure his tortures while their loved ones wept and begged him to stop - but for  _ him _ ? For his sake, to spare him pain?    
  
No. Nobody had ever cared about him so much. Nobody had ever tried so hard to save him that even when the skin had worn off their fingers, they had kept working, kept pressing their raw flesh against the same strings that had taken the skin off. She had bled for him but she hadn’t wept, just set her face in an expression of stubborn concentration and  _ kept playing _ .    
  
He still didn’t understand why Sona had helped him but he knew needed her aid once more.    
  
The question was how to make it happen? Thresh couldn’t simply sit by and hope for another match to be disrupted but they were both supports. They were very rarely played on the same team unless someone was letting her fight in mid. During matches, they certainly didn’t have time to talk and their marksmen would be eavesdropping on them all the time anyway. He needed to get her attention, he needed to get her alone and he needed to get her help.   
  
It was a lot to need, especially for a person who had never needed anything before Karthus had interfered.   
  
Could he give a message to a fellow Demacian to deliver to her? No. It would raise questions and Karthus might come to hear of it. Help from any of the other Shadow Isles inhabitants was out of the question. He had no allies; he’d never seen the point of them, preferring to collect victims instead.

The release of the DJ Sona skin was exactly what he needed. The Summoners were so eager to test it that Sona was being played everywhere.   
  
The first chance he got to roam mid, he took. Kalista wasn’t his ideal choice of a bot lane partner for this (she was so clingy, keeping him tethered and leashed and ulting him if he got too far) but he wasn’t going to wait for a better game. He could feel her pulling irritably at the soul bond between them but he ignored that in favor of listening to the throbbing music. The flickering lights were like a beacon made of souls, drawing Thresh onwards.   
  
He needed to talk to her. He needed to talk to her  _ alone _ .

  
It didn’t even matter that she was on the enemy team.   
  
His hook shot forward and landed between her shoulderblades, stunning her in place long enough for Thresh to pull himself towards her. He threw his Box up immediately around both of them just to prevent her escaping - she had plenty of health, it wouldn’t really hurt her. It’d just make sure she’d stay long enough to listen.   
  
“You have to heal me.” There was no time for subtlety, no time for shame. Desperation drove Thresh to speak words that he didn’t think he’d ever voice, Thresh letting the hook slip from Sona so he could look at her eyes instead. The blue glow of his aura shimmered off her tight bodysuit, overlaying oddly with the green and teal of her lights. It made it look almost as if she were a soulstealer as well.   
  
The pitiless expression certainly suited a soulstealer better than a healer.

She had played until her fingers bled trying to heal him last time. Why was she now looking at him with such contempt?   
  
“Sona!” He rasped desperately, skeletal fingers grabbing her thin wrists and closing tightly. If he hadn’t needed her to play for him so badly, he would’ve snapped her wrists as punishment for her delaying. “Play something. I  _ need _ you to heal me.”   
  
How far had he fallen that he’d used the word ‘need’? That he was begging her for aid? His bones prickled as if he had centipedes crawling over them. Shame was a sensation he could have well done without learning. 

Sona turned her face from him, looking pointedly towards the walls of the Box instead. Her flash was down, he remembered hearing the Zed say that.  She had to stay with him!   
  
But she didn’t have to listen and for some reason, she wasn’t listening to him now.   
  
He grabbed her by the shoulders, bone fingers digging in so deeply that the flesh swelled around them, and gave her a shake. Her breasts and ponytails bounced in tandem as she looked up with eyes that were incredulous instead of frightened.   
  
“Play for me!” He ordered. summoning up the memory of how he’d been (fearsome, commanding, a figure that was  _ obeyed _ ). She wouldn’t have dared disobeyed him if he’d ordered this back then!   
  
(He would have never ordered this back then, he had no taste for music.)   
  
She raised one hand dramatically, flexing her fingers. Her clear blue eyes looked up at him, steady and scornful; her fingers swept down over the etwahl and Thresh found himself dancing, unable to further plead for her help.   
  
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw their jungler approaching.   
  
Kalista’s ult saved him but it was only temporary. She could do nothing against the true threat that waited off the fields.


End file.
